Don't look for the Wake County school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force to be focusing on student assignment.
During Thursday's meeting, task force members and people from the audience were able to vote on up to three topics for the group to focus on. You could put all three of your dots on one issue or spread them out.
Among the leaders after the light voting was student assignment.
To whittle down the list to three topics, members were asked to vote by raising their hands. You could leave your hand open to signify support or raise a closed fist to indicate not to deal with that issue.
When it came time to vote on student assignment, there were a lot more raised fists than open hands. Karen Hamilton, acting as the facilitator, said they would drop it from the list.
Diana Bader, who was in the audience, asked how they could drop a topic that got so many votes.
School board member John Tedesco, chairman of the task force, said he'd defer to the wishes of the group.
After the meeting, Tedesco accused Bader and a group of other non-task force members of loading up their votes on student assignment. Tedesco said that while task force members understand that student assignment is an important issue that there are other things they need to focus on.
Instead of student assignment, the task force will look at issues such as pre-school services.
Wake's pre-K program is expected to be slashed when the federal stimulus money runs out after the end of this school year. Wake had used the stimulus money to expand the number of pre-K classes.
CORRECTED TO SAY ASSIGNMENT IN FIRST PARAGRAPH
Comments
Well that was dumb.
Fri, 10/29/2010 - 13:46 — Dove314Ms. Bader seems to have lost the plot as much as any other. Given all the assignment hooha, why introduce that here except to bait. Thank goodness that got rejected.
But weren't there going to be 3 topics selected for moving forward? The above article only mentions pre-school services. Also, lferrari mentioned more in another post about the curriculum audit and some concerns she had based on that.
Lferrari -- can you share a bit more on this. I'm not sure I understand. Did this mention any recommended changes to the status quo or just acknowledge that solving the achievement gap in reading (mentioned here) could never be fixed under the current conditions?
Topics
Fri, 10/29/2010 - 14:14 — nmoskalIf my memory is correct:
As danofnc mentioned preschool and intervention were intially two separate votes and then ended up being combined into one topic after the voting. The other topic was Effectiveness Assessment. Parent Involvement had mixed voting and they said they would come back to it, but it wasn't clear to me where that ended up.
Ms. Bader seems to have lost
Fri, 10/29/2010 - 14:10 — jenmanMs. Bader seems to have lost
Fri, 10/29/2010 - 14:09 — jenmanIf I understood correctly,
Fri, 10/29/2010 - 13:54 — danofncIf I understood correctly, the audit pointed out the flaws (in direct, harsh words), but didn't necessarily provide recommended steps to correct the flaws.
The district is supposed to do that, and there is another audit planned to test the fixes. I think the finding that troubles you is one of the reasons we have an ED task force.
I can't remember the other two topics they selected to focus on (since I was a visitor, I didn't feel comfortable particpating in the hand voting that would affect future meetings). I think parent involvement was one, but I'm totally drawing a blank on the third.
I am pretty sure they rolled preschool and initerventions into one topic, since preschool is a "prevention" that is an attempt to prevent the need to have interventions.
My notes
Fri, 10/29/2010 - 15:09 — lferreriOn the issue of the topics, I tried to take notes but couldn't keep up. Anyway, I do have Evaluation, Intervention, and Preschools as the three topics that were selected. I think Intervention and Preschools may end up being combined as you said, dan. I think Parental Involvement was voted on and had a mixed result unlike the other three that had more support. Personally, I think a lot of these issues will come up anyway, whatever topics the task force concentrates on. They overlap a lot.
I don't know much about the how the Curriculum Audit works. It sounded to me as well that they are coming back soon. (Next year, maybe?) I can see where it is useful to have an outsider's opinion, but I am a very concrete person so the lack of specifics kind of drives me crazy. I'll give you an example. One of the governance actions was "Adopt a policy that makes a commitment to end the achievement gap based on socioeconomic status and ethnicity." It sounds good. But how is it gap going to be closed? I can't imagine that there was a policy not to do this in the past, but I don't think just passing a policy accomplishes much.
I hope you can come to the next meeting. There are some interesting, involved people. I've met someone new at every meeting. This is an issue that can use lots of help from everyone.
Mr. Hui - correction to first sentence
Fri, 10/29/2010 - 09:28 — nmoskal"Don't look for the Wake County school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force to be focusing on student achievement."
I believe you meant ... not to be focusing on student assignment (not achievement as written).
The task force will most definately be focusing on achievement.
You're right. Will fix.
Fri, 10/29/2010 - 11:47 — KeungHui (author)You're right. Will fix.